I have been paying attention to the discussions around artificial intelligence (AI). It has taken me all the way back to 1971, when the Fort Frances Times began producing the newspaper electronically. It wasn’t a full-page layout, but it was the start of using computers.
The newspaper had purchased a headliner that used strips of film, through which, when a light passed through a letter, the image was made on photographic film. One adjusted the size of the letter on film mechanically. It also purchased a typesetter that did much the same thing when tape was fed through a reader.
It was based on Base 8, not our traditional Base 10 in mathematics. Two people typing could not keep up with how quickly that machine could produce galleys of printed material that would be waxed down.
Through several modernizations over the next 15 years, those first machines were replaced multiple times, and eventually, we moved to Macs. It was a new revolution. We stored our information on floppy discs that were eventually replaced with external hard drives. All the computers were connected in the building through Ethernet, and we gave up sharing discs.
Through the 1990’s, every two years, we upgraded those Macs and software which required more power and could do even more to make life simpler. We could play with images, often creating our own.
When the first Bass Tournament was held in 1995, we shot colour film of the takeoff at the Point, hurried over the bridge to have the film developed and back in our hands to put the paper out with the colour of the launch that afternoon. Within three years, we no longer needed to develop the film as we moved to digital cameras that downloaded the photos to our internal database.
We went from manual layout to a full-page layout that is today’s system. Each upgrade took time to learn and an understanding of the benefits that computerization kept delivering. We could never have dreamed in 1971 what we could do in 2005 or even today.
Now, our phones have better cameras than the early digital cameras. Each change in production made the paper better. There was always worry that computers would replace people, but instead, they offered more creative opportunities for our clients to promote their businesses.
Today, AI is all around us. There is worry that the technology will do away with jobs, just like the worry that computerization in the 1970’s was going to destroy jobs. Instead, it created whole new ways of doing work and developing information. Teachers and human resource people constantly see, on applications and essays, the work of AI.
It does make for a great piece of literature. I have even taken columns to see how Chat GPT or Word Co-pilot would rewrite them—often, the output from both is entirely different and does not convey my style of writing or understanding of the issue.
It is easy to use the programs, but we must be aware of the use of AI when we read items on the web. You can trust the integrity of the stories in the Fort Frances Times, or Atikokan Progress, or The Globe and Mail or Winnipeg Free Press. They are all written by journalists who take the time to research, understand, learn and reflect on the stories they write.
